‘A great wee place’: the small Scottish factory crafting Olympic curling stones

“It takes 60m years and about six hours to make a curling stone,” shouts Ricky English above the whine of the lathes. The operations manager at Kays Scotland is surrounded by wheels of ancient granite in varying states of refinement.It is a small business with a big responsibility: the only factory in the world to supply the Winter Olympics with curling stones. Competitors don’t travel with their own stones, which weigh about 18kg each, and with 16 required for a game. Instead, this year, 132 stones were crafted in the East Ayrshire town of Mauchline and shipped to northern Italy

Chess: Magnus Carlsen triumphs in London speed event but Nakamura fails

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, visited central London last weekend and won the chess.com speed championship for the fourth time in a row. The Norwegian, 35, defeated France’s Alireza Firouzja, 22, by 15-12 after a three-hour struggle. Last year in Paris the same two players met, but Carlsen’s winning margin was a much wider 23.5-7

Ice in his veins: Australian skier Cooper Woods embraces pressure to realise Winter Olympic dream

From the turquoise waters of a sleepy NSW beach town to the summit of his sport atop an alpine mountain in Italy, it has been by Cooper Woods’s own admission “an absolute journey”.Australia celebrated its latest Olympic champion on Friday after the freestyle skier stunned the rest of the field in the final, including moguls greats Mikael Kingsbury and Ikuma Horishima, to become his country’s seventh Winter Olympics gold winner – and first medallist of these Milano Cortina games.Few observers would have seen it coming. Woods has only reached the World Cup podium once – a silver medal at Waterville Valley in 2024 – since he joined the tour in 2017 and had endured a difficult 2025-26 season leading into the Games.He arrived in northern Italy ranked 20th in the world and told reporters he “didn’t have any expectations”

Winter Olympics 2026: Ukrainian athlete kicked out over helmet tribute, Lollobrigida claims dramatic speed skating gold – as it happened

Vladyslav Heraskevych has accused the International Olympic Committee of doing Russia’s propaganda for them after he was barred from racing in the Winter Games because he wanted to wear a “helmet of memory” in honour of Ukraine’s war dead.Speaking to journalists following the IOC’s decision, the 27-year-old was asked how he felt. “Emptiness,” he replied. “Yesterday was amazing training. I could be among the medalists in this event, but suddenly, because of some interpretation of the rules which I do not agree with, I am not able to compete

The scandals clouding ‘sinister’ French ice dancers who beat Chock and Bates for gold

The American duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning three-time world champions contentiously missed out on Olympic ice dance gold on Wednesday despite a flawless skate. But the controversy surrounding the event is not merely a debate over artistic and technical merits.Gold went by a narrow margin to the French duo of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. It was a stunning achievement for a partnership that is less than a year old. But the union was forged after the fallout from sexual assault allegations levelled at Fournier Beaudry’s boyfriend and former ice dance partner, while Cizeron is the subject of allegations of abusive conduct from his erstwhile skating partner

Gregor Townsend warns England not to underestimate wounded Scotland

Gregor Townsend has warned England against underestimating his Scotland team and believes the hosts can maintain their fine recent Calcutta Cup record in Edinburgh on Saturday. The visitors have only won two of the last eight fixtures between the two countries and Townsend wants his players to feed off the feelgood memories of previous English losses.While last weekend’s deeply disappointing loss to Italy in Rome has generated plenty of external criticism, England have won only once at Murrayfield since 2017. Townsend is expecting his players to bounce back from their Italian setback and says they will be inspired by past successes. “I would hope they don’t fade into irrelevance because our players have evidence that they’ve won in this fixture,” stressed the head coach